Peru completes sweep over Canada in women’s volleyball

LIMA, Peru – Subpar play at the end of sets continued to haunt Canada’s national women’s volleyball team on Saturday night as they lost to Peru 17-25, 25-14, 20-25, 25-20, 15-13 on Saturday night to complete a five-match series between the two world championship bound squads.

With the victory, Peru won all five matches in the series. Both Peru and Canada, ranked 17th and 24th in the world respectively, are currently tuning up for the FIVB women’s world volleyball championships set for October 29 to November 14 in Japan.

In the deciding fifth set, Canada squandered a 9-6 lead to the delight of the 5,000 plus spectators in attendance.

"It was pretty disappointing for us not to finish,” said Tiffany Dodds of Lucky Lake, Sask., who scored 11 points. “Again tonight we needed to be better at closing sets especially after the 20-point mark.”

Still it was a drastic improvement on the three-set loss on Thursday.

“Our blocking was really good tonight and is continually improving,” said Dodds. “If we can bring up other aspects of our game and make fewer mistakes we will be more successful."

Sarah Pavan of Kitchener, Ont., was the top Canadian scorer with 19 points.

“"The match was a history of the whole week in Peru,” said Canada’s head coach Arnd Ludwig. “We did some really good things and at the end we made unforced errors. This week was good, we played against a very good team and we are very close to them."

Canada is the midst of an 18-day tour and closes out its trip with three matches against Costa Rica on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Costa Rica is also headed to the worlds.